High Speed Train Crash, China

At least 43 people were killed and over 210 injured in a
horrific high-speed rail collision in Wenzhou, Zhejiang at
about 8:30pm last night (Saturday, July 23). The accident happened when one
train, D3115, lost power after being struck by lightning,
and then was rear-ended by another train, D301. A total of
six carriages were derailed, two falling from the viaduct.
According to Phoenix TV, the time of the crash was 20:34.

D3115 was traveling from Hangzhou to Fuzhou, and D301 from
Beijing to Fuzhou. There were more than 1,400 passengers on
the two trains.

According to Zhejiang radio, the driver of D301 was stabbed
to death by the brake handle after using the last moment of
his life to pull the emergency brake.

After a call was put out from a local Wenzhou hospital for
help, hundreds shows up last night to donate blood.

The Railway Ministry has already ordered an "urgent overhaul
of railway and train safety nationwide," and 21 trains have
been suspended.

This tragedy is particularly scary in that the collision was
caused by an unplanned power outage on the train, something
that has been plaguing the recently opened Shanghai-Beijing
line. We can only hope the safety overhauls are both
immediate and effective.

The GCP event was set for four hours beginning at 8 pm
(12:00 UTC), which is about 30 minutes prior to the crash.
The result is Chisquare 14504.381 on 14400 df, for p =
0.268 and Z = 0.618.

It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny
statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish
signal from noise. This means that every "success" might be
largely driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real
signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can
be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of
similar analyses.